My grandmother Elsa died in the spring of 2018, and among the things she left me were a massive oak sideboard, a set of six mismatched Arabia coffee cups from the 1960s, and a rocking chair that creaked so loudly you could hear it through two closed doors. None of these things matched my apartment. None of them fit the clean, modern aesthetic I’d spent three years carefully building.
I almost put them in storage. Almost sold the sideboard on Tori.fi. And then, partly out of guilt and partly out of something I couldn’t quite name, I decided to try making them work.
That decision changed the way I think about interior design entirely.
Why the Best Rooms Are Never All One Era
Walk into any home that’s been entirely furnished from a single store or a single decade, and something feels off. Not wrong, exactly — just flat. Like a stage set waiting for the actors. Everything coordinates perfectly, and that perfection is precisely what makes it feel unlived in.
Now walk into a room where a mid-century teak credenza sits beside a modern modular sofa, where an inherited brass lamp illuminates a contemporary print, where the layers of time are visible. That room tells a story. It has depth. It feels like someone actually lives there and has lived there for a while.
This is something Nordic interiors have always done well, even when the broader design conversation emphasizes newness and minimalism. Finnish homes, especially the ones I find most beautiful, tend to be a mix — grandmother’s china in a modern glass cabinet, a 1950s Aalto vase on a clean-lined contemporary shelf. The culture of quality and longevity here means people hold onto things for decades, and those things inevitably end up coexisting with newer purchases.
The trick isn’t whether to mix old and new. It’s how to do it so the result feels intentional rather than accidental.
The 70/30 Rule That Keeps Things Grounded
When I first started mixing vintage pieces into my modern apartment, I went too far. I got excited about flea markets and second-hand shops and suddenly half my living room looked like a time capsule. The modern elements felt like afterthoughts in someone’s grandmother’s house, which wasn’t what I was going for.
A designer friend of mine — she runs a small studio in Punavuori — gave me a ratio to work with: 70/30. Seventy percent of the room should be your dominant style (in my case, modern Scandinavian), and thirty percent should be the contrast (vintage, inherited, found objects).
This ratio gives the room a clear identity while still allowing the older pieces to surprise and add character. My living room right now is mostly clean-lined modern furniture — HAY sofa, Muuto side table, a simple white-oiled birch bookshelf. The vintage 30% is my grandmother’s oak sideboard, two 1960s Ilmari Tapiovaara dining chairs I found at a shop in Kruununhaka, and a collection of old Arabia pottery arranged on one shelf.
The ratio doesn’t need to be exact. It’s more of a feeling. Stand back and look at the room with soft eyes — does it read as predominantly one thing with interesting layers? Or does it feel like two competing identities fighting for attention? If it’s the latter, you’ve probably tipped past 30%.
For the foundational principles that make this kind of layering work, my guide to Scandinavian interior design principles covers the broader approach.
Finding the Common Thread
Every successful mixed interior has a common thread running through it — some element that ties the disparate pieces together and makes them feel like they belong in the same room. This thread can be almost anything: a material, a color, a finish, a shape, a texture.
In my living room, the common thread is wood. The HAY side table is light oak. The grandmother’s sideboard is darker oak. The Tapiovaara chairs are birch. The bookshelf is birch. The picture frames are maple. Everything is a different shade and species, but they’re all wood, all natural grain, all warm-toned. That shared materiality is what makes the 1962 sideboard and the 2023 side table look like they chose to be neighbors.
Color works too. I’ve seen apartments where the connecting thread is brass — vintage brass candleholders, modern brass cabinet handles, a mid-century brass floor lamp. Others use a specific accent color: maybe a dusty blue that appears in a vintage painting, a modern cushion, and an old ceramic vase.
The thread doesn’t need to be obvious. In fact, the most sophisticated interiors hide it. You feel the cohesion without immediately understanding why. But when you start looking, it’s there — a quiet repetition of material or tone that holds the room together.
Material Bridging: The Technique I Use Most
Material bridging is my favourite method for making old and new coexist, and it’s the one I use most consciously. The idea is simple: when you place a vintage piece next to a modern one, make sure they share at least one material.
My grandmother’s oak sideboard sits on the same wall as my modern bookshelf. Between them, I placed a small Artek stool — Alvar Aalto’s Stool 60 in natural birch — that acts as a bridge. The stool’s organic wood warmth connects to the sideboard’s traditional oak, while its clean, minimal form connects to the modern bookshelf. It’s a translator between two design languages.
Textiles are another powerful bridging material. A Johanna Gullichsen cushion in a geometric pattern has a distinctly modern, almost Bauhaus feeling — but when it’s made from a natural cotton-linen blend in earthy tones and placed on a vintage armchair, it pulls that old chair into a contemporary conversation. Gullichsen’s textiles are particularly good for this because they reference Finnish weaving traditions while remaining graphically modern. The Doris and Nereus patterns are my favourites — structured enough to feel current, textured enough to feel timeless.
Even something as simple as a wooden tray can bridge two worlds. Place a modern ceramic vase on a vintage wooden tray, and the tray’s patina connects to other older pieces in the room while the vase connects to the modern ones. These small gestures accumulate, and the result is a room that feels like it grew organically rather than being assembled all at once.
Era Mixing: How Many Is Too Many?
I generally try to keep things within three eras at most. In my case, that’s: mid-century (1950s–1970s), which covers the Tapiovaara chairs and grandmother’s sideboard; contemporary (2015 and later), which covers the HAY and Muuto pieces; and a smattering of 1990s vintage that includes some Iittala glassware and a couple of textile pieces.
Three eras gives you enough contrast to be interesting without becoming chaotic. Each era has its own visual vocabulary — the organic curves and warm wood tones of mid-century, the pared-back geometry of contemporary Scandi — and three vocabularies can coexist in a dialogue. Four or five starts to feel like a rummage sale, unless you’re exceptionally skilled at editing.
Within each era, try to keep pieces somewhat cohesive. My mid-century pieces are all Finnish or Scandinavian in origin, which means they share certain design DNA even though they’re different objects. If I started mixing in, say, 1970s American pop furniture alongside 1950s Finnish functionalism alongside Victorian English antiques — that would be much harder to pull off. Not impossible, but it requires a much more sophisticated eye.
The Hietalahti Market Strategy
If you live in Helsinki and you’re not visiting Hietalahti flea market, you’re missing one of the best sources of vintage pieces in the country. It runs from May through September, outdoors along the waterfront near Hietalahti Square, and the indoor hall has vendors year-round.
I go there roughly twice a month during the season, and I have a system. I never go looking for something specific. I go with my phone loaded with photos of my apartment’s current state, a tape measure in my bag, and a maximum budget in my head (usually €50–€80 for any single trip).
The phone photos are crucial. When you’re standing in a market stall looking at a gorgeous vintage lamp, it’s very easy to convince yourself it’ll work in your apartment. Having the photos there as a reality check has saved me from countless impulse purchases. I hold the phone up next to the object and ask: does this share a material, color, or proportion with what’s already in the room? If not, I walk away.
Some of my best finds from Hietalahti: the Tapiovaara chairs (€80 each — they retail new for over €400), a pair of vintage Iittala Kivi tealight holders in pale green (€12 for both), a small hand-woven wall hanging from the 1970s that I’ve never been able to identify but love fiercely (€25), and a brass-and-glass hurricane lantern from what appears to be the 1940s (€15).
The indoor hall is pricier but more curated. The outdoor market is cheaper but requires patience and early arrival — the serious dealers pick through the best stock by 9 am.
Other good spots in Helsinki: Relove in Kamppi for second-hand designer items, the UFF shops for textiles, and the various vintage stores along Fredrikinkatu. Outside Helsinki, the antique shops in Fiskars village are wonderful if you’re making a day trip.
When IKEA Meets Vintage: Making Budget Work
Not everything in a mixed interior needs to be a design classic or a precious heirloom. Some of my most effective pairings involve IKEA basics combined with vintage finds. The key is to let each category do what it does best.
IKEA excels at: simple, clean-lined storage (the KALLAX, the BILLY, the BESTÅ), basic textiles in solid colors, functional lighting, and unobtrusive occasional furniture. These pieces provide the modern, neutral 70% of your room’s identity.
Vintage pieces provide the other 30% — the character, the story, the warmth. A KALLAX shelf unit is boring on its own. Fill it with a mix of books, vintage ceramics, a small inherited clock, and some plants, and suddenly it has personality that no amount of styling with brand-new objects could achieve.
My entryway is a good example. The bench is IKEA (the TJUSIG, €49). The hooks above it are vintage brass from Hietalahti (€8 each). The mirror is an old ornate frame I found at a charity shop in Vallila (€20), reglazed with new mirror glass (€35 at a local glazier). The basket underneath for shoes is modern Muuto (a gift). Together, they look curated and intentional. Nobody walking in would think “IKEA” or “flea market.” They’d just think it looks right.
Knowing When a Piece Doesn’t Work
This is the hard part, especially with inherited items. Not every vintage piece deserves a place in your home, and sentimentality can blind you to the fact that something simply doesn’t fit.
Grandmother Elsa’s rocking chair? I tried it in three different rooms over six months. It was too large for the bedroom corner, too visually heavy for the living room, and its dark mahogany clashed with the lighter woods throughout the apartment. Eventually, with a pang of guilt, I gave it to my cousin Anna in Tampere, whose home has a completely different palette — darker, heavier, more traditional. It looks perfect in her reading room.
Letting go of a piece doesn’t mean you don’t value it. It means you value it enough to want it in a space where it can shine rather than struggle.
I kept the six Arabia coffee cups, though. They’re mismatched — different patterns from different decades of Arabia’s production — but they share a color palette of blues and greys that works beautifully with my kitchen shelves. And every morning, when I drink my coffee from one of them, Elsa is there. That’s what inherited objects are really for.
A Room That Tells Your Story
The apartment I live in now looks nothing like any magazine spread, and I mean that as a compliment to myself. It’s a mix of careful modern choices, inherited oddities, flea market victories, the occasional mistake I’ve learned to love, and a few pieces I’ve owned so long they feel like part of the architecture.
Would it photograph cleanly for a minimalist design blog? Probably not. Does it feel like home in a way that no all-new, all-matching interior ever could? Absolutely.
That’s the real promise of mixing old and new. You’re not just decorating. You’re creating a visual autobiography — a room that holds your past, reflects your present, and has space for whatever comes next.
If you’re curious about which modern design pieces are genuinely worth investing in to pair with your vintage finds, have a look at my post on design icons worth the investment. And for seasonal styling ideas that work beautifully with a mixed-era interior, try seasonal home styling from summer to autumn.
Start with one old piece you love. Put it next to something new. Stand back. Squint a little. If it feels right, you’re already on your way.
